Hey everyone well Jen and I are thinking about going to a flash site instead of our HTML site. dont get me wrong I like our site, but I want to have a bigger gallery sample window like some of you have already and just the look and feel to a flash site really make s a huge impresion on clients and whatnot. Anyway I have looked at blu domain and I like a few templetes there and i went to Big Folio and I really like on eof there premium templetes there but what are the benifits of either one? I like that Blu domain you can use your existing host instead of theres but I dont know. Colin michale has a site from Big Folio and loves it. Anyway any input would be greatly appreciated.

Stewart C.

i have had two blu sites. i prefer them over big folio - i looked at the templates at big folio and they really just didnt do much for me.

i had the lucy template at blu and loved it but it did not have a shopping cart. so i upgraded a week ago to the juliet template - there were some glitches at first but everything is working now and i love love love the shopping cart!

i get wonderful customer support from them as well.

i know there are some people out there who think too many photographers are using blu and everyone's sites are starting to look the same - but i highly disagree. you can customize your site according to your colors, move your galleries around, change their names, etc. to where they barely resemble the original template. i also dont think customers really know the difference, let alone care. the only reason i recognize the blu sites is because i have looked at so many templates when deciding on which ones to choose.

i host with blu, but i host my own email, so if their server ever does go down, at least istill have communication.

the ease of updating and editing your site is so easy squeezy! i love the mega image uploader as well, i can upload a couple hundred pics in just a few minutes.

i can't say enough about how much i love my site!

they may have had a few complaints, but i feel this is due to overwhelming and un-anticipated growth spurts this company went through. look at how many clients they launch on a monthly basis - i dont think anyone in that company anticipated this and were not prepared. i really think they are on the upswing though. one report at the BBB does not warrant this company a bad reputation - there are many companies out there with these reports on file with the BBB - anyone can lodge a complaint and unless you have heard both sides of the story - i wouldnt focus on it.

I dont know anything about blu other than what I have read here, but there is certainly plenty of good and bad.

All I will say is my experience with the BF guys has been AWESOME. I LOVE my new site, and will continue to work with them in the future.

Never heard anyone complain about BigFolio sites or service. Have heard lots of complaints about Blu's service. Depends on the risks you're willing to take.

+1
I've also heard VERY good things about Creative Motion Design and Parade(which is in the same price range as you're looking at, but definitely different templates)

its so hard though to choose. Yes I have heard alot of complaints about the customer service with Blu, but have heard wonderful things about them as well. The horror stories I hear are that the customer service is just horrible. I know I am going off of just opinions. Its hard to choose. The templates on Blu are amazing but BF also offers a sweet template called Cherry Lane!!!! Its amazing. Thanks all. Please if others can help that would be great!!!

Stewart C.

For me, a few complaints are enough - I don't have time to deal with that, and knowing my luck, I'll end up with the problems. One complaint - I can chalk that up to misunderstanding, point of view, etc. More than that, and I take it seriously and am not willing to take the risk with my business. There are enough companies with no complaints or only minor complaints that I'll take my business elsewhere.

I will tell you that you cannot go wrong with BF. The way Blu treats thier clients no way I would ever go with them. Their templates are good, but I could never deal with that type of customer service.

yeah thats what I am saying and more and more people complain about Blu. i Don't want to have a headache of a time if something goes down and clients cant get to our site. Big folio might be the way to go.

Stewart C.

Chris, I've been with BF for nearly a year now & I can't even begin to explain how great and how crazily prompt their customer service has been. To be honest though, I haven't needed to contact them very much because I've never had major problems with their templates, blog or hosting but the few times I have needed something their support is first class. The only down side is you have to host with them & it's expensive in comparison to other hosts (sorry BF guys if you're reading!) but at the same time you're assured of top quality hosting services.

As for Blu, I've heard good & bad things but can't comment other than to say they have some lovely templates and nice little extras such as calendars, shopping carts & client access only, but if you go with them choose a template that isn't obviously Blu (if that's possible!!)

Exactly why I went with BF. Their service is absolutely amazing, I wish mine was so good!
Hosting on their server was a bit odd at first but then I realized how much more simple it makes things for me. That and their back-end tools are super easy to use! the other great thing about BF is when you have a premium template, like cherry lane, you can switch to any other template at any time.

Keep an eye on BF, I hear that there may be some new things in the works from them...

Chris, do you know BF have a special offer on at the moment? You get a free second site (standard template) if you sign up with them this month.

yeah i saw that offer on there. Thanks Colin. well its sounds like BF is the way to go. Its just a matter of when we can do it. Hey does anyone know how long it takes to get it up and live from start to finish?

Stewart C.

I've had my site with Big Folio for a few months now. I put in a support request for some custom work -- stuff they don't normally do -- they had to get a developer involved to figure it out. They did it fast, they did it happily and they did it right the first time. If customer service is important to you, and you want to support companies that get it right, then here's another BIG vote for BIG FOLIO. When I grow up, I wanna be just like them.

EDIT: Start to finish on my site -- hmm, let's see: I worked night and day on getting my galleries edited. It's still a work in progress, but from the point I signed up to the point I COULD have gone completely live was about a week, maybe a week and a half.

Wow I love your site. what templete is that from BF? Cool well all of you are helping alot. Just need a little more income and it will be a decison to go to BF.

Stewart C.

I second Creative Motion Design! Their customer service is better than ever htnaks to a small change. Layla rocks.

If you ask enough people, you're bound to here positives as well as a few negatives about all vendors out there. So just use these posts as "input" for your decision, but you're ultimately going to have to go with your gut. Definitely talk with both companies and explore as much as you can before committing.

I have absolutely no experience with Big Folio, but I've been with Blu since before the greater photography community really "discovered" them. We're in the final stages of upgrading our website to a new Blu template that we purchased with their big Birthday Bash promo -- we got in just before the big onslaught of requests!

The Blu team is a SUPER group of people, and very dedicated to helping you look your best on the web. I just can't say enough great things about them. I've read some posts questioning their phone support response times, but honestly... I've always emailed my project director (Aundrea), and typically receive same-day answers -- and often even within a few hours. Very, very professional.

So if you see something you really like with Blu, I'd go for it, 'cause they'll take extremely good care of you. Folks will tend to migrate where they really feel most comfortable, so YOU ultimately have to find that place and then make it happen.

Best of luck!!!

David

Another BigFolio fan here! I've never worked with Blu because of the things that I've heard about them (too many mistakes to be a coincidence IMO). Hosting with them is a bit more expensive, but the price has gone down in the time that I've been with them. And, since I do host with them, I know that any trouble I'm having (usually due to my own error anyhow), I can contact them and they know how to help. Customer service is outstanding!!

I have no experience with Blu, but want to cast another vote for BigFolio. My site is not a BF right now (sadly), but I had a BF site for almost 3 years. Customer service--A++, ease of use--A, ability to stand out in a crowd--A, willingness to go above & beyond--A++! I love 'em!

Reed Market Street or something like that. THANKS! The one thing I don't like about it is that the links are on the bottom, so when people are using teeny tiny screens, sometimes the links go away (but I had BF set it up so the site resizes on smaller screens, but then I don't really like how it looks when it resizes). So, I'd recommend a template with the links at the top.

I have strong evidence to the contrary, as do others. Which is why they are a risk. While most companies have weaknesses or issues that arise from time to time, the fact remains that we hear little, if no complaints about the others. The complaints against Blu have been frequent and similar.

I so so so want a BF site. I even have one picked out!!! I'm keeping an eye on their blog & hoping for a sale. I wanted to snatch one up when they had their birthday promo but didn't have the money

I don't even look at blu's templates because of the problems that I have heard of have been downright nasty. I have never heard a bad word uttered about Creative Motion Design, you might want to check them out too

Love Big Folio! The two for on sale ends in a few days. Free SEO is awfully tempting!
Here is mine! Port San Luis Pier template. Mike and Charley are the best! The blog is pretty cool as well.

www.jennifergrigg.com

http://jumanjijuice.bigfolioblog.com/

big folio gets my vote.

p.s. i have no personal experience with blu.

The interesting thing is that I don't know that I have ever heard anyone complain about BF as a company. Their service is amazing. It is possible the templates themselves just aren't to someone's liking but I really don't think I have ever heard anyone complain about their service, support or uptime. don't get me wromg, odds are that someone has had a problem but it hasn't been big enough that a thread has been started or it has even been mentioned on the boards.

Chris- you asked about startup time...it took them about 30 minutes to get mine up from the time I said go, maybe even less than that! You have to upload all your images after it is live so plan on some time for that. To get prepared in advance, find out which template you willl use and size your images per the instructions for that template. That way you can just start uploading as soon as it is live.

I just signed up with BigFolio last week and I have to say that so far they have been fantastic at responding all the questions I had. I'm in the process of setting up the site and new blog now and hope to launch everything within the next week.

I'm also getting a quote from them to do some custom changes to my template I choose.

Good luck

I've had no problems at all with Blu. Like, at all. And every interaction with them has been more than pleasant. I'm even hosting on my own server and they got that set up super quick, and have been great every time I've had a question.

You really can't beat their templates, IMO

I love Big Folio..they are the best...and the best customer service around!!!!

I have no experience with BF, but am not a huge fan of their standard templates. Now, if we could have afforded a custom one...that's defintiely the route we would have gone! But, we recently ended up ordering a Blu template b/c we love them so much and they are in our price range! So far, so good. The slow-ness is totally on our end. Hopefully we'll finish our editing soon and you can check it out!

I have been in contact with Mike at BF and he has been such a help with questions I have had and thats impressive and I m not even signed up yet. Hopefully very soon in the next month or 2. we are in the process of upgrading alot with our business. We are trying out Constant Contact right now and already WE LOVE IT. Also we are going to update the website as well as changing online galleries companies. we are thinking of going with After shutter which right now is called EZ Photosales. And we are going to be having our first Album release party later this August to try to raise money for these upgrades as well as keeping past clients thinking of us. Anyway I am so grateful for all the advice.

Stewart C.

I've been with BluDomain, hosting on my own servers (dreamhost.com) and have had nothing but greatness. I had two small coding issues with their files, they logged in that day, fixed em, and BAM everything works.

I love blu!

Clients love the templates, my servers is faster and better than Blu's so that's a huge feather in my cap, and then I now have two rocking templates from them.

I'm about to relaunch a seperate wedding/engagement site, and the other model/seniors/family site.

I can't wait!!!

-tmiller
Tim Miller Photography
http://tmillerphoto.com

Well everyone thank you all for your input and comments. today is the day that we contact BF and sign up!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!! I cant wait to get started. Thank you all!!!

Stewart C.

Congratulations!!! I'm sure you'll be very pleased. Hope it helps the biz reach new heights!

You will not be disappointed in BF. They are an awesome group, no matter how many questions you have they are always there to answer. Keep a watch on their blog as they do run specials, I got my premimum template upgrade at a great deal. I hope to get it launched this week.

Can't wait to see your new site Stewart.

i think it would be nice to give blu a break here. i never hear of anyone complaining about any current issues - all i hear is stuff drudged up from the past.

if you had a problem at a wedding, and had a bad day or your camera failed or whatever, would you seriously want that following you around for your entire careeer? at some point, we must move on and allow for growth.

Well here's a current issue.

Despite the negative feedback I've read in OSP, I decided to go with blu. Basically I love the simpicity of the designs and well, blu's exactly in my price range. I lucked out and caught one of those $800 template for $400 deals.

I was so excited, I emailed them (twice), got my contract via email and faxed it in (July 31). A few days later, I was waiting for some sort of acknowledgement or invoice - nothing. I wrote a follow-up to blu, asking about the status of my order, they wrote me a short email saying they emailed me back. I didn't get so I checked my spam box, still nothing. I asked them for a resend of whatever they sent me, nothing happening. It's been a week and half, and I have yet to get any acknowledgement that I am signed on to blu or if I'm a client at all.

I'm a bit confused and in the dark as to my status now. Just today, I requested a service ticket and will wait and see...Since I signed the contract, I don't want to backtrack now because my mind was set. But well, I just hope this isn't a bad sign of things to come.

Two days ago they had a major email server outage that affected a large number of people for the better part of two days. There are several long threads about it on several other forums that are very current.

The reason I chose NOT to go with Blu for my website was their documented record of outages. And I'm not just talking about on message boards where people can get snippy. If you go to the Blu website and really read their blog you'll see that *once a month* (and yes, that's very nearly every month for the last year) there's a post about how sorry they are that they're having email/server problems. Sometimes it's "we aren't getting your emails .. please email us at our gmail account". Somtimes it's "we're experiencing server issues on one of our email servers and our customers aren't getting their email". Sometimes it's both. Last year at WPPI they posted on the blog that someone in their company was running to Best Buy to get a backup router.

To me, that level of error and the lack of backup onsite is a HUGE big deal for a company that is supposed to be a specialist in hosting and websites. I communicate with my clients via email every single day. If my email were down for even one day, I would be in a world of hurt. I don't trust, given that Blu themselves admits on their blog that their email has been down, that they are reliable enough to trust my site to.

Please note that I am not "slamming" on them. I am giving a factual reason as to why I chose not to go with them.

Karen

Blu is amazing. They have been nothing but wonderful for me!

Ok guys well a few things. One is we didn't get the site yet cause as we were talking we are in a tough spot.

1. We have alot going on with the business right now. we are throwing a album party bash at the end of the month and we want it to be a hit and have people coming and just having that WOW factor and thats going to cost a bit of change.

2. We are redesigning brochures, and our wedding packages and really making our look more streamlined which costs money again.

3. We are also thinking about changing Online Galleries from Studiocart to After Shutter. right now its called EZ Sales which will change to after shutter. That cost more money

4. And finally the Web Site. A huge decision causer that costs the most money of them all. Its like this. We are standing on one side of a canyon, and about 10ft from us is the web site, where all we have to do is jump to the other side, but there is a gap between those things. The delema is there are alot of pluses to getting this new site, which would be better feel of our work, better communication with future clients as well as past clients, a better way to see our work in better detail, functionality, etc etc, but do we take that jump? And can we afford it? We see the long term of what it can do and this Album party could generate money to pay for the site, but its a 50-50 shot. Either you do or it sinks. Jen and I have been praying for the last 2 days on this and talking with Mike Caston and he has been so helpful and patient. Just wanting to make sure that we arent going to dig ourselves into debt. So thats where we stand. I thought we had it the other day but Jen and I talked and thats where we stand right now.

its so wierd hearing about these blu issues - i have two sites running with them now and i coldnt be happier - i dunno..... maybe because of the time zone differences i never notice if my site is down? haha wouldnt that funny...... every night i go to bed and my site goes down......

nah, seriously, i have no troubles. when i faxed over my contract though a couple weeks ago, i did notice they didnt get back to me with their usual quickness, so i emailed them and it turned out they had an office wide meeting. next day though i had my admin link.

I think the point is that Blu is very inconsistent in both services and customer service. Others aren't nearly as inconsistent, if at all. Because of the well-documented inconsistencies, Blu poses a greater risk, one that people should be aware of.

Since I am still a Blu customer, I am compelled to let others know about my experience and the risks, especially in the midst of all the hype and gushing about their templates and services. I wish I would have known all these facts when making my decision.

I decided on Blu. So far, so good. Wednesday I requested a contract with thhe $400 off deal. Thursday morning it was emailed to me. I faxed it to them Thursday @ 8:00 pm. By 11:30 pm they e-mailed me confirmation of my order.

I responded half and hour later and they e-mailed me back in minutes to say my site info would be ready to go and sent to me today.

Sorry you have had problems with Blu Bruce, I have had no such problems. I have been a customer for almost a year now and I have 2 templates. Like Sarah, when I first requested a contract it was sent that same day, I faxed it back that same day then about 4 days later my site was ready to go. I even had a special request to do some custom programming on my first site, and they had it done within a week....again with no miscommunication. I checked out Bigfolio's templates, and Blu's were just more appealing to me with a wider selection, that is why I went with them. In a few years I will probably have a custom site built so I can be more unique, but I would highly recommend Blu to anyone looking for a great price on a great website. No problems here!

As I said earlier folks... everyone has to make THEIR own decisions based on THEIR own evaluations.

In my years with Blu, I don't believe their customer service to be "inconsistent" at all. Are they a smaller company that may have experienced growing pains along the way? Absolutely. Are they a bit naive about what appears on the blog sometimes? Perhaps. But inconsistent customer service, and risky? Never... and purely an exaggeration by anyone who would characterize it that way.

If you're looking to speak with someone on the phone multiple times per day, then Blu is probably not your cup of tea. However, their email support is terrific... as is their new tech support ticket system. Yes... I was affected by their email server glitch the other day, but I was also kept in the loop multiple times as to the steps taken to resolve the situation. Problem was solved... and it's now history as far as I'm concerned. In my several years with Blu, that was the first time I had experienced a glitch -- and they solved it quickly and professionally. That glitch was a blip on the radar screen, when I step back and look at the ENTIRE Blu experience -- which has been nothing short of terrific.

David

I 100% think people should make their own decisions, and take everything into account. And I respect that you have had a great experience. However, I don't think it's appropriate to characterize other people's experiences as "exaggerations" - the information available doesn't require any exaggeration whatsoever. You're free to make your choice, etc, but let other people speak for their experiences as well.

Well... I guess that's what I was doing earlier in this thread (i.e., speaking of my experiences with Blu -- along with everyone else) when I said they were a SUPER bunch of people. Then the other poster that seems to have had SO much trouble with Blu said he had "evidence to the contrary" and feels "compelled" to tell everyone how risky Blu is... sorry if that sounds a bit over the top. But it's an outright irresponsible statement to make.

If someone posts negative info about a company, I just think it should be done responsibly... and if they keep showing up multiple times in the thread saying the same negative things, you've gotta wonder what's really motivating them.

We're not all going to choose the same companies to partner with... and that's what makes the world go around.

David

Dude, don't assume I am being irresponsible in my posts about Bludomain ... you know nothing about me or the nightmare I went through with them.

I am posting information about them based on MY experience, and I simply believe others should know that they ARE a risk. And people will make their own evaluations of companies and services, but it sure helps to gather facts while making that evaluation.

What's motivating me? My horrible experience with their customer service. Something wrong with that?

exactly. you should only post comments, good or bad, based on your OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. not what you heard sally say about jane's brother's cousin's email.

speak directly about what happened to you only.

i believe what has happened has been exagerated by a few -

Seems like Bludomain is now the Pictage of web template/hosting companies. If you love them, you're rabid and fanatical about them and no one is allowed to say anything bad ever. If you don't like them because of bad experiences, you're villified and it's implied it's your fault or you're spreading rumor.

Gotta love photographers. Cult like behavior at it's finest.

karen

Hey "Dude", take a breather. I'm not making any assumptions... just responding back to your comment that tried to downplay my complements to Blu as being a SUPER team, which they are. If for some reason they don't work for you, then move on. These mismatches happen from time to time. And that's why I suggested back on page 1 that folks should closely look at each option they're evaluating... talk to BOTH companies and see what works best. Focus on the positive... life's too short to keep drudging up the negatives.

David